BRUGGE, John I

Brugge’s long career is patchily documented and raises several problems of identification and interpretation. On one hand, it is difficult entirely to disentangle it from that of his kinsman of Staunton-on-Wye, MP for Herefordshire in 1420, who died in 1436, and was, like our MP, connected with the Talbots.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 394-5. On the other, his own career rather gives the appearance of having been two, although there is firm evidence to show that it was not. It had two distinct phases: he was intensely active in the reign of Henry IV, serving both in the royal household and in the administration of his native shire; thereafter, however, in a remarkable transformation, he played no further significant part in public affairs beyond a single election to Parliament. Why this should have been so is not clear. His prominence under Henry IV may have been a function of short-term factors, namely his place in the royal household, not thereafter maintained, and active role against the Glendower rebels. This explanation is consistent with Brugge’s modest landholdings. Although he was distrained to take up knighthood in 1439, in other words, he was considered to have an income of £40 or more, a significant part of this was derived from an annuity granted to him by Henry IV. His own landed possessions, seemingly, consisted of two small manors in the neighbourhood of Bishop’s Castle, and in 1403 a royal grant was made to him in ‘relief of his poor estate’.6 CP25(1)/195/22/22; CPR, 1401-5, p. 240.

Brugge is perhaps to be identified with the namesake of Lea, who, as early as 1390, delivered money to London on behalf of Richard, Lord Talbot, but this is more likely to have been his father.7 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 232. The first certain reference to our MP dates from December 1401, when he was serving as a yeoman of the King’s chamber. He probably came into the royal household through Lord Talbot’s widow, Ankaret, heiress of the barony of Strange of Blackmere, who in the previous summer or shortly before had married Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival, an important servant of the new regime.8 Ibid. 13; CP, v. 590. At all events, Brugge quickly found favour. On 3 Dec. 1401 he was rewarded with the handsome life annuity of £20, assigned on the issues of his native shire.9 CPR, 1401-5, p. 22; CCR, 1402-5, p. 2. This might be seen as an instance of the new King’s profligacy, but the outbreak of Glendower’s rebellion gave Brugge the opportunity to both repay royal generosity and earn further rewards. On 8 Sept. 1403 he was granted, ‘in consideration of his expenses and labours in Wales and in relief of his poor estate’, lands in the Shropshire hundred of Chirbury (not exceeding the value of 20 marks p.a.), forfeited by one of Glendower’s adherents, David ap Cadwalladur, to hold to him and his male issue. A year later the grant was remade on more specific and generous terms: Brugge was to have the lands in fee and they were specified as lying in Brompton, Rhiston and Timberth. This property was not only strategically placed – that is, between the border fortresses of Montgomery and Bishop’s Castle – but also well placed to supplement his existing holdings.10 CPR, 1401-5, pp. 240, 420; CCR, 1402-5, p. 108. How long he held this property is unknown, but by 1431 the lands had come to Howell Cadwalladur: Feudal Aids, iv. 260.

Brugge was expected to earn these rewards. Proof is lacking, but it would be surprising if he did not fight for Henry IV at the battle of Shrewsbury in July 1403, perhaps in the retinue of Lord Furnival. More mundanely, on 29 Jan. 1404, he was named alongside other royal household servants on a commission to arrest Sir Thomas Talbot, constable of Montgomery castle, and bring him before the King in person. Soon after, when the death of John Trefnant, bishop of Hereford, had brought the episcopal lands temporarily into royal hands, he was entrusted with the keeping of the castle at Bishop’s Castle, near his own home at Lea. Under his command there he supported a substantial retinue of six men-at-arms, including his kinsmen, Philip and Roger Brugge, and 30 archers. On the following 25 Sept. the temporalities were bestowed on the new bishop, Robert Mascall, but Brugge remained at Bishop’s Castle until at least the following December, by which time he had added to his duties those of the escheator of Shropshire.11 CPR, 1401-5, p. 426; E101/43/28; 44/6, m. 1. His custodianship of the castle gave him a taste of the costs of royal service. He and his retinue were due wages of just over £200 for their period in the garrison, and Brugge had to petition the King to order the Exchequer to account with him.12 E101/43/28; E28/19/29.

On 12 Feb. 1408, while Brugge was serving a further term as escheator, a curious appointment came his way: the Crown named him to act as captain of the castle and town of Ludlow, in royal hands during the minority of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, while the captain, Roger Acton (later executed as a lollard traitor), was abroad pending pardon for outlawry. He was to take 110 marks p.a. from the revenue of the castle and town to defend and maintain them, and also to protect him from once more becoming a royal creditor. His pricking as sheriff in November 1412 was the culmination of this period of intense activity. It was as sheriff that, on 12 June 1413, he paid four marks for an inspeximus and confirmation from the new King of the letters patent that had granted him an annuity in 1401. A few months later, on 26 Feb. 1414, as compensation for the expenses of his shrievalty, he had pardon of account in the modest sum of £40, the standard sum for Shropshire sheriffs.13 CPR, 1405-8, p. 394; 1413-16, pp. 142, 171.

From this point the pattern of Brugge’s career changed. His appointment as sheriff had come at a sensitive time in local politics. John Talbot, Lord Furnival, was agitating against the local hegemony of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and Brugge’s nomination is to be seen as arising from the successful assertion of Talbot’s influence. While he was in office there were serious clashes between the supporters of these two lords.14 E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society, 216-24. What part, if any, he played in these and subsequent disorders is unknown, yet his subsequent disappearance from the records for a period of years must be connected with these events. As part of measures to restore order, Henry V sent Talbot to Ireland as his lieutenant, and Brugge went with him. Talbot landed at Dalkey on 10 Nov. 1414, and a month later he nominated our MP and Sir John Keighley, once a privateer, as joint-admirals of his fleet. It is from this point that Brugge’s career becomes more difficult to trace, and it is not known how long he remained abroad. Talbot himself returned to England in February 1416 before a further period in service in Ireland from May 1418 to July 1419, and it seems unlikely that our MP stayed in Ireland after this last date. Yet the possibility cannot be discounted that he was the John Brugge who, in August 1421, had a general pardon enrolled on the Irish patent roll.15 Rotulorum Patentium et Clausorum, 219; Pollard, 112.

However this may be, when Brugge did return to England, he found himself faced with unresolved legal difficulties, namely a trial for felony. In all probability, this arose out of an untraced indictment taken in the summer of 1414 when the court of King’s bench had come to investigate the disturbances in Shropshire, and had then been postponed by his absence in Ireland. It was set to take place before the Shropshire justices of assize on 27 July 1423 and must have ended in acquittal.16 KB27/648, rex rot. 14d. Although he was a man of significant military experience, he appears not to have followed his lord to France when Talbot moved the scene of his activities from Ireland. But he did remain in the service of the family. In June 1425, for example, he was at the Talbot manor of Whitchurch, the sum of 3s. 5d. being allowed for the cost of stabling his horses. Later in the year he was at Westminster, appearing in person in the court of King’s bench to pursue an action of trespass. The Parliament to which he was elected in the following year assembled at Leicester. His election at the Shropshire hustings held on 7 Feb. 1426, in company with another Talbot servant, George Hawkstone*, was another aspect of his service to the Talbots. John Talbot (now Lord Talbot) was then in England, and his dispute with Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, over precedence gave him a particular reason for wanting his own men in Parliament.17 Accts. of the Talbot Household, 1392-1425 (Salop Rec. Ser. vii), 155; KB27/658, rot. 99; C219/13/4; RP, iv. 312 (cf. PROME, x. 316)

After his service in Parliament, Brugge became an increasingly marginalized figure. Although he began regularly to attest Shropshire’s parliamentary elections, something he had not done earlier in his career, and held office as the bishop of Hereford’s steward at Bishop’s Castle, his recorded role in public affairs was largely limited to the modest capacity of juror. Between February 1428 and March 1436 he acted in that capacity at the inquisitions post mortem taken on the deaths of Parnel, widow of Sir Hugh Mortimer, Sir Philip Boteler and Philip’s son, Edward, and Richard de la Mare*.18 CIPM, xxiii. 42, 111, 188; xxiv. 463. Almost all that is known of him concerns the routine steps he took for the protection of his private affairs. On 26 Oct. 1429, for example, he secured a writ summoning Sir William Lichfield*, sheriff of Shropshire in 1427-8, into the Exchequer to explain why he had not paid our MP his long-standing annuity; and ten years later he had a judgement in damages of nearly £10 against Humphrey Lowe, sheriff of the county in 1438-9, probably for a similar failure. In 1431 he sued a chapman of Bridgnorth for a debt of 28 marks, and in 1435 he troubled to appear in person in the court of common pleas to pursue actions for small sums against various of his lesser neighbours.19 E5/488, unnumbered; E13/143, rot. 7d; CP40/681, rot. 299d; 699, rot. 371d.

Only once in the later years of his life is Brugge recorded in a more public role: on 27 July 1439, when the justices of assize came to Shrewsbury, he was one of several of the county gentry entertained with wine by the borough authorities. This relative anonymity is the more surprising in that he remained a member the Talbot affinity. That continued attachment is clear from his will, as in his readiness, in July 1433, to join Lord Talbot in entering a bond in £60 to the Chancery clerk, Nicholas Wymbissh.20 Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs. bailiffs’ accts. 3365/375, m. 2d; CCR, 1429-35, p. 258. Late in his career Brugge appears in another surprising context. In Michaelmas term 1439 he and his wife, Joan, levied a fine settling their manors of Lea and Ocle with six messuages and 180 acres of land and wood in Bishop’s Castle and More on two Somerset esquires, Thomas Bratton and his son, Simon, both of Bratton near Minehead. One can only speculate as to why he did so, but one very likely possibility is that his wife was a kinswoman of the Brattons, perhaps even Simon’s sister, and that the conveyance was intended to protect her life interest.21 CP25(1)/195/22/22; Some Som. Manors (Som. Rec. Soc. extra ser. 1931), 102. By another fine levied on the same day the MP’s kinsman, Roger Brugge, acknowledged the right of John and his wife to a small parcel of land in Hardwick, a further indication that these settlements were designed to benefit John’s wife: CP25(1)/195/22/23. Joan’s later marriage to another Somerset man, Walter Torvey, certainly supports the notion that she herself was from that county.22 This marriage had taken place by 1456: CP40/780, rot. 80d. Much less easy to say is how Brugge, who had no landed interests outside Shropshire, should have come to find a bride there. However he did so, she was the mother of his three children, who were all minors at his death.

Brugge made his last will on 11 May 1443, naming his putative father-in-law, Thomas Bratton, as one of his executors alongside Joan and a leading servant of the Talbots, Richard Leget. As envisaged in the 1439 fine his manor of Lea and all his other lands in Shropshire were to remain in his wife’s hands for the term of her life, before passing, successively, in tail to his sons, John and Thomas, and his daughter, Elizabeth. This was the only significant provision of the will, which gives the appearance of having been hastily contrived. It contains only three charitable bequests: 12d. to the high altar of the London church of St. Giles Cripplegate; 20s. to the church of Bishop’s Castle for tithes forgotten; and the same modest sum to be distributed to the poor. Curiously, he was in London when the will was drawn up: its witnesses were headed by a chaplain of St. Giles and it was in the cemetery of the church there that he wanted to be buried. Presumably he was there to prosecute his own pleas in the Westminster courts, as he had done on several earlier occasions.23 PCC 16 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 120v). He had had at least two pleas of debt pending in the previous Hil. term: CP40/728, rots. 150, 398d.

Brugge probably died on the day he drew up his will. A later inquisition erroneously dates his death to the day before, but he was certainly dead by the following 27 May, when Sir John and Sir Christopher Talbot* (sons of his old lord), the supervisors of his will, sued out royal letters patent granting them his long-held annuity of £20. It may be that they secured the continuation of the annuity to the benefit of the testator’s family. On the following 14 July writs of diem clausit extremum were issued in respect of Brugge’s Shropshire lands, and his will was proved five days later. An inquisition held at Wellington on the following 24 Aug. returned that he died seised of no lands and that his son and heir, another John, was only ten years old.24 CPR, 1441-6, p. 194; CFR, xvii. 234, 295; CIPM, xxvi. 153.